Search


Some of the tasks below are better performed in pairs.

Task 1: Search

Open the Facebook homepage and the Twitter homepage. You have 3-5 minutes to find out why the location bar for these two URLs looks different. You can use whichever web resource you prefer to find out the answer.

facebook url twitter url

Discussion

Students discuss the different strategies they used to find out the answer for Task 1, the difficulties they encountered, and how they succeeded.

Quiz Question Nr. 1

Search engines like Google, before displaying search results, check the pages for the veracity of their information.

  1. True.

  2. False.

  3. Only for pages in English.

  4. Only the websites served with HTTPS.

Quiz Question Nr. 2

If you search for the word "Obama" on Google, you see something like: About 591,000,000 results (0.23 seconds). How is the number of results calculated?

  1. It is estimated based on how often people search for the word.

  2. Everytime a website adds a page about a topic, it automatically notifies Google, which then increases a counter variable.

  3. Google algorithms read the content of websites continously and keep track of every word on every page.

  4. Google employs Mechanical Turk workers to read the Web and update its databases with this information.

Quiz Question Nr. 3

The special program that search engines use to visit webpages is known as:

  1. a spider

  2. a crawler

  3. a bot

  4. all of the above

  5. none of the above

Quiz Question Nr. 4

How is the order of the search results determined?

  1. there is no specific order, results are usually random

  2. based on the last time the bots have visited a page

  3. based on how often users click on certain links

  4. based on the reputation of a website

Quiz Question Nr. 5

Who founded Wellesley College? (Check the Wikipedia page on Wellesley College for the answer.)

  1. Horatio Hollis Hunnewell

  2. Harriet and Arthur Welles

  3. Pauline and Henry Fowle Durant

  4. None of the above

Quiz Question Nr. 6

Browse this website on the chemical DHMO. Do you think there should be a ban on DHMO?

  1. Yes, I support a ban right away.

  2. More research needs to be done before I would support a ban.

  3. No, I do not support a ban.

Task 2: The Gangnam Style Failure

Read this article. How much of the technical explanation are you able to understand? You can learn more about the Year 2038 Problem by reading the linked Wikipeda page.

Summary

We hope that after today's discussions you have a better understanding of how certificates and search engines work.

For more on Extended Validation Certificates, see that Wikipedia page. In particular, see the criticisms at the end.